


Grub

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Daisy Johnson, Bisexual Phil Coulson, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Grilled Cheese, Minor Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie/Yo Yo Rodriguez, Minor Melinda May/Agent Piper, Oral Sex, Phil Coulson is a loser, Phil Coulson's ridiculous crush on Daisy, cooking show au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-08-29 20:22:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8504146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: Phil Coulson takes over as the host of a popular cooking show and meets his idol Daisy Johnson, who hosts her own YouTube cooking show. Flirting and cooking and sexing and approximately 0 plot.





	1. Chapter 1

“I don’t get you,” May says, and then tips her beer bottle backwards, draining the dregs of it. “You’ve been here since practically the beginning, you love to cook, you never _wanted_ to be stuck behind the camera. Isn’t this your dream?”

“Yes.” Coulson stares down his friend, one of the co-producers of the show, a little self-conscious at being called out for his ambivalence about his privilege. “Of course it is.”

“Your face says otherwise.”

She raises her eyebrows at him, like the fact that his face says anything is some kind of strike against him.

He fiddles with his left hand nervously, slides his right fingers up to play over the band of metal on his forearm.

“I don’t want to run a show like Garrett’s.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I kind of do. His audience —”

“—can still watch the traitor cook filet mignon on _Food Inc._ with their fucking premium cable subscriptions. And the ones who want to will get used to you. Or they won’t.” She shrugs, like this is all nothing.

“If I lose viewers —”

“Coulson,” May sighs the faux put-upon sigh that he most associates with her. “Fury believes in you. All the producers believe in you. _I_ believe in you. So just shut up and run the show you want to run, okay?”

It’s touching, actually. May has never had any fucks to give about the cooking part of the show — has always told him she finds it interesting, but she’s not into this fancy stuff. She’s always cared more about the ratings, about keeping the audience happy.

“Thanks,” he smiles at her, and she rises from the couch where she’s been sprawled to dump her empty bottle into the recycle bin. It’s early for her to be calling it a night, and he cocks his head to the side in silent question.

“I have a date,” she informs him, almost managing to sound casual about it.

His shock must show on his face — May hasn’t seen anyone since she lost her husband, hasn’t been even a little interested in the idea — because she scowls at him, and he immediately goes for contrition.

“Who with?”

“The new stagehand.”

“Piper,” he supplies, although obviously May already knows that.

“Yeah,” she touches her hair, smooths it around her face, which is more of a tell than May ever has. “She’s taking me out for tapas.”

“First date?”

“Third date,” she corrects him, tosses it off like it isn’t important, but she can’t hold back the smile that makes her glow — and he’s only seen one other person who could ever make her smile like that.

“Have fun,” Coulson says instead of something more gushy, something that might make her self-conscious.

“Thanks.” May nods at him once, clearly grateful he’s not pushing. “Try not to feel too bad for yourself about your great opportunity,” she snarks as she backs out the door, and Coulson rolls his eyes as he settles back on his couch.

The truth is that as much as he’s happy for her — and he _is_ , she deserves to find someone great — the idea of May dating again hits him weird. He’s probably enjoyed her single status too much, has gotten too used to hanging out with her quietly on too many evenings, drinking beer and watching television and wasting time together. Of course she wants to do better things, though, to move on and meet people.

It makes him feel like a big loser (bigger loser); looking at two failed relationships in the last five years, at his inability to make things work with anyone as he has sunk himself too far into this job. It’s like he made himself so comfortable in his directorial niche that now that it’s changing, he’s looking at his life _outside_ work again for the first time in...too long.

Whether to soothe himself or just out of habit, Coulson pulls out his laptop and wakes it up, jiggles on the touchpad impatiently as the screen lights up, opening immediately onto his YouTube recommended videos. It’s become a guilty pleasure in the past few years to watch YouTube cooking channels — young people with talent and skills and no money making cool things happen in their kitchens.

If he were twenty years younger, if he hadn’t stumbled upon the opportunities Fury handed him, this is what he’d be doing. He’s sure of it. And maybe there’s been a part of him that has _wished_ that’s what he’s been doing.

Since his accident, since he died on an operating table four years ago, he’s become more conscious of the the legacy of the show, of _his_ legacy carrying forward the work of Nick Fury, of what he wants to accomplish with his work. And some of what people are doing on these small channels gets at it better than he’s managed to, especially in the last ten years of helping to run a show he could no longer believe in.

His favorite vlogger does the kind of work he wants to do — smart and socially conscious and open. Everything he wants his show to be, everything Nick Fury once tried to touch on, and everything that got lost when John Garrett took over.

And he shouldn’t get the happy little thump in his chest (loser, such a loser) when he sees that she’s posted something just moments before. He shouldn’t feel connection to someone he’s never met, never even interacted with, but as he jams his earbuds in his ears, he just does.

“ _Hey, guys_ ,” she greets the camera from her seat at her kitchen table, familiar yellow wall behind her. “ _It’s Daisy here. I’m editing my next video. It’ll be up this weekend, but I had to post something because I’m_ so _excited. I don’t know if you heard, but that creepy windbag John Garrett is finally leaving_ Grub.”

Coulson frowns at the laptop, but leans forward to listen to Daisy tell a story about meeting Garrett at a book signing, about the way he talked to her and looked at her and tried to touch her. It makes him _furious_ , at Garrett for ever having the job and also at himself, that he didn’t do enough to check this kind of chauvinistic behavior.

“ _Bad, bad vibes_ ,” she shakes her head at the camera. “ _I couldn’t even hatewatch it after that. But, you know,_ Grub _used to be_ amazing _, back when Nick Fury was the host. They do everything live, like for real live, and it can make for some awesome TV moments. That show is really why I started cooking, you know — trying to figure out how to make that stuff on a hot plate in my van._ ”

She grins, and she has this way of dropping these tiny facts about herself, of dropping these _terrible_ facts about herself, but somehow making it seem funny, like it’s all just part of some inside joke she’s sharing with the camera. And Coulson never lived out of a van, but there were plenty of years before Nick Fury found him when he was struggling to keep the power on, so whenever she talks about her past it feels...familiar.

“ _So, if you guys wanted, I could start making this a regular thing? Like, review the show and maybe give some tips about how to make it happen on, like, a_ real _person’s paycheck_ ? _Everything I’ve read says the new guy is supposed to be good, and from all the pictures I’ve seen, he’s kinda sexy, too —_ ” Daisy pauses and holds up a black and white publicity shot of him in an apron smiling almost shyly, and sort of wiggles it back and forth in front of the camera. “ _— so, you know, I’ll probably be watching anyways_. _Just let me know in the comments what you think_.”

She winks at the camera and Coulson’s face gets so hot he’s sure he’s beet red.

And, for the first time since he found these videos, he ponders leaving a comment. A comment...what, introducing himself? He frowns at the screen and closes it before he does something stupid.

What she says though — making food on real people’s salaries, balancing the technique with the reality — he likes the idea of it, wants that on _his_ show. Nick Fury had started _Grub_ with a specific take about _elevating_ real people food on real people budgets. When Garrett took over, though, when Fury got tired of the spotlight and wanted to go back to his restaurant, the idea of “real people food” got lost, with a bigger focus on classical training and technique.

Of course, Coulson put himself through cooking school; he has the technique. But there’s something that was always missing about Garrett’s show — that materiality, that groundedness, that thing that keeps him coming back to Daisy’s channel.

For all May’s admonishments, he spends the rest of the night planning out the kinds of food he could make for his first show — the kind of thing that will set the tone he wants.

(The kind of thing that Daisy will want to watch.)


	2. Chapter 2

“I thought that was great!”

Ms. Simmons smiles at him encouragingly, clearly not understanding his frown after his first real show, and he tries his best to smile.

“Great, huh?” Too much teeth, he can feel, so he backs it off to a pleasant neutral face, but he’s tired and frustrated and he doesn’t want to pretend otherwise just to spare some people’s feelings.

“It went well, sir,” Fitz agrees as the two of them — the new directors, his former assistants — walk at a brisk unison pace next to him, back towards the dressing rooms. 

“You don’t have to call me  _ sir  _ anymore,” Coulson says dryly as he loosens his tie, unbuttons his suit jacket. They  _ never _ had to call him  _ sir _ , but he’d been their boss behind the scenes for so long he just got used to it.

“Right.” Simmons nods, and looks over at Fitz like they’ve just been told something ridiculous. 

“It went well, um, Phil?” Fitz tries, and Coulson almost laughs. 

“Thanks.” 

“Do you want us to do anything differently next time?” 

They’re both clearly thrown by his ambivalence, and he gets it. Neither of them are here because they care about the show, about the legacy, about the cooking. They’re here for the experience before they move onto bigger things, and the things Coulson is unhappy with...neither of them would understand. 

“We’ll touch base at the staff meeting, okay?” 

“Sounds good, sir,” they call out to him in unison, and he raises an eyebrow, but turns away quickly, holding in his frown until they can’t see it anymore. 

It was a disaster, is the truth. The food came out fine, but he’s way too aware that he didn’t do enough on camera, that he completely missed the tone he was going for. He came out too much like a guy trying to imitate John Garrett’s bro-y, detached style, and it’s just...not him. 

And honestly, he doesn’t need people telling him it was great — he needs someone who will be honest and help him figure out how to make it better. He also needs to take off the makeup caking on his skin — he hates this part of being on camera — but he needs the feedback more, something to help him feel like this is all salvageable, like there are some concrete steps he can take that mean the show isn’t just ruined. 

So he heads to May’s office, obviously, because no one tells it like it is like Melinda May. 

If he weren’t so up in his head, trying to decide what he wants to do differently, he might notice the noises that suggest May isn’t alone in her office, but as it is, he just walks inside like he normally would. 

And sees Piper sprawled across May’s desk chair, her jeans kicked off to the side, as May kneels between her legs. 

He backs away and slams the door too hard, unable to move for a minute in his shock. 

May darts out of her office a moment later, dressed but looking a little disheveled. 

“Have you heard of knocking?” 

“Have you heard of locking the door?” 

She nods once, looking a little contrite — at least contrite for May. 

“We got a little carried away.” 

“I could tell.” The shock wears off a bit, and Coulson can’t quite hold back a smile. “I take it your dates have been going... _ really _ well.”

May narrows her eyes at him, but can’t quite bite back a smile. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Really well.”

“I’m happy for you.” 

She nods once, and then schools herself back to her professional demeanor. 

“What did you want, Coulson?”

“Notes on today’s show. But I guess you weren’t watching.” 

“No,” she admits. “I’ll watch the tape, and we can do a post-mortem tomorrow, okay?” 

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

“I’m sure you were fine.” 

He grimaces a little, and May rolls her eyes. 

“That bad, hm?” 

“FitzSimmons seem to think it was good, but…” 

She glances impatiently back at her door.

“Tomorrow, okay?” 

“Yeah. Give Piper my best.”

May flips him off as she disappears back into her office, and Coulson smiles at the closed door. It’s still weird, but he’s never been someone who could begrudge his friends their happiness just because he’s lonely. 

So, he walks back to his dressing room alone, washes off his makeup, and changes from his suit into jeans and a button-down, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. And then he pauses in front of his laptop. 

It’s obviously too soon for her to have posted reactions, but he didn’t check the past few days, and if there’s something that might take his mind of his own crappy show…

He skims through a few new videos from other vloggers — people with real schticks that he could take or leave — and finds one new video from Daisy’s channel yesterday, announcing her first ever community meetup. 

It’s funny because he’s known — on an intellectual level, he’s known because she’s said it — that Daisy lives in LA just like he does. But watching her invite him to her friend’s restaurant, a little place that just opened up just a few blocks from his apartment, is...jarring. 

And maybe if he were in a different headspace, he would just click away and go on with his night. Maybe, tomorrow, he’ll blame it on May for having a date instead of taking the time to go over notes with him. 

But tonight...he’s going to a community meetup. 


	3. Chapter 3

He spots her as soon as he walks into the restaurant, sitting serenely at a long table surrounded by people talking all around her. It’s a very Last Supper kind of tableau, he thinks, Daisy in a red dress, positioned in the middle like some kind of savior figure.

Of course, everyone who has showed at this meetup is closer to Daisy’s age — around 30, young adults. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb if he goes over, and he knows it, so he hangs back, watching for a moment, and then heads to the bar.

Maybe he can just pretend like he has nothing to do with this event, can just hang out on his own, have a whiskey, and go home like he’s not the loser he is.

It’s about three sips into his solitary whiskey that he’s interrupted by her voice:

“You look a lot better out of the suit.”

He startles, almost drops his drink down to the counter, and turns to look at her. She’s even more beautiful up close, in person, which is surprising because he’s pretty sure it shouldn’t be possible. But her eyes are a perfect deep brown, and the high-waist of the short dress makes her legs look endless, and she’s just...gorgeous.

“Thanks,” he manages, somehow still stuttering on the single syllable, cringing at himself and his complete lack of cool.

“Not that you look bad in the suit —” Her eyes go a little wide as she backtracks, like she’s flustered and not any cooler than he is, and it’s ridiculously endearing. “Just, you look, right now, when you’re dressed down —”

She pauses and licks her lips.

“Thanks.” He smiles this time, and she smiles back. “Phil Coulson,” he says as he offers his hand, and she takes it easily.

“Yeah, I know. Daisy Johnson.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She looks genuinely surprised, and her grip on his hand tightens.

“You watch my show?”

“Yeah.” He tries not to smile too much, not to _fanboy_ on her, and it’s disappointing when she releases his hand.

“You _do not_. You’re like...for real.”

“And you’re not?”

She stares at him for what feels like a long time, and then gestures to the barstool beside him. He nods once, and watches from the corner of his eye as she sits down and orders herself a drink — whiskey on the rocks, same as his.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you sulking in a bar instead of out celebrating with friends? That’s what I’d be doing if I had just hosted my first real show.”

He shrugs, isn’t exactly about to spill his pathetic life on this pretty young woman, and he can’t fucking believe he showed up here to...to what, to meet some person he feels he knows. Some stranger who stopped feeling like a stranger.

“Maybe this is me celebrating.”

He raises his glass at her and takes a sip right as Daisy’s drink gets dropped on the bar.

“Should I leave you to your celebrating, then?”

“No,” he answers too quickly, too eagerly, then draws a breath. “No, as long as you’re not expected over there.”

It’s clearly the answer she was hoping for because she smiles and crosses her legs, right over left, and he can’t help the way his eyes slip down to take in the bare, smooth expanse of her thigh, just for a moment, before he focuses on her face.

“So, Phil Coulson,” she says his name like she’s chewing it over, like it somehow means something to her, “tell me something about yourself.” She looks hopeful about the request, and he tries not to to think about the way it’s a first date kind of question.

“I’m originally from Wisconsin.”

“My dad’s side of the family is from Wisconsin.”

He nods; he knew this. She had shared this story one night while cooking a frittata, of searching out her parents and finding out about them, of the pain of not knowing and then the pain of knowing. Maybe that’s why he chose to tell her this, something that would connect them.

“And you want to visit, but you’ve never been.”

She blinks at him.

“You really do watch my show.”

He thinks she sounds flattered, and he smiles at her, tries to be encouraging about it.

“I really do. Every week. You’re _good_.”

“What makes me _good_ ?” He _thinks_ she’s embarrassed with herself for asking, that she’d like to be cool the same as he would and not care about what other people think.

“I like your angle.” He pauses, draws a spiral shape on the bar with his index finger before he turns back to look at her, to reveal something about himself. “I never lived out of a van, but my mother and I...we struggled to have enough some weeks. And it seems like everyone wants to tell poor people to eat healthy, to eat _well_ , but no one wants to talk about how to make that happen. And you do. You talk about finding good ingredients, and making good food with what you have, and also how to advocate for better social programs.”

“Some commenters say I’m too much of a social justice warrior.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “just the right amount.”

She smiles at that, this big, wide grin that makes his heart thump in a way it really _really_ shouldn’t. It takes him a moment to realize he’s staring at her, smiling too much in return and probably making her uncomfortable, so he turns his gaze back to the bar.

“I knew I’d like you,” Daisy shares, and he ducks his head like a bashful schoolboy.

“From watching one show?” He tries hard to play at nonchalant, even manages to glance over at her, can see her expression go pensive.

“I feel like I should probably admit something to you right now, so this doesn’t get even more awkward later,” Daisy says, something wary in her tone that worries him enough to make him turn back to face her.

“Is it about the review you’re gonna do of my show?”

“What? No.” She shakes her head, but smiles at him, like she’s figured something out. “No, I was gonna tell you...I looked you up.”

“There’s not much to find.”

“Oh no. There’s a lot to find...if you know where to look.”

“You were a hacker.” He says it like it’s a revelation, but it’s really just remembering something he already knew. “So what did you find out?”

“Well, I already knew you were born in Wisconsin. Single mother. High school in Boston. You lived with your mother while she was sick.”

He nods, rests his chin on his left hand and watches her tell him about himself, sort of impressed despite himself.

“Keep going.”

“You put yourself through school in New York, after...” she pauses, clears her throat.

“After my mother passed away,” he supplies. “She’s the one who taught me to cook, so it felt like a way of keeping her alive.”

Daisy’s eyes are piercing for a moment, like she’s seeing straight into him or maybe like he could fall into the dark brown depths of them, and then she blinks and her expression softens.

“Nick Fury discovered you while you were working as a sous chef in New York, and he liked you so much, he decided he wanted you on his show.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Coulson had helped with writing and research, with developing concept shows, until Fury left. After that, he’d settled into a directorial role behind the camera, but with minimal creative input.

“That’s pretty impressive, you know? To have a seal of approval from _the_ Nick Fury?”

It makes him want to take her to New York, to sit at the chef’s table at Shield, to introduce her to Fury. Fury, he thinks, would love her — her videos and her attitude and everything about her.

“You said you were a fan of his —”

“ _Big_ fan. No matter where I was in the world, no matter what family I was with, I could always turn on _Grub_.”

He nods, totally gets it, the mark Fury made on the world. The day he retired from television was a sad one.

“It was a dream come true,” he says, and it _was_ — it was a dream come true, and he’s exactly where he wants to be in his life. But even if he’s happy with how things turned out, it’s unavoidable that it feels tainted by everything that happened.

He swirls the last of his whiskey around the bottom his his glass before slugging it back and signalling for another.

“You were supposed to be his successor,” Daisy says, and her words are careful, like she’s not sure she should say them, so he tries to be less negative. He invited this, after all.

“I was. When I started working with him, he wanted me to take over.”

“That means I was almost watching _your_ show for the past ten years. And trying to figure out where to go to _accidentally_ meet you.”

It makes him smile — the thought of her wanting to meet him, this reality that could have been.

He’s finds it a little hard to imagine, someone like _her_ being a fan of someone like him, but then he remembers that she had told the story of going to meet John Garrett. (Although, he thinks that having met a younger version of Daisy — a fan of his — wouldn’t have been nearly so fun as meeting this woman he’s already a fan of.)

“Is that what you’d do? _Accidentally_ meet me?”

“Not like… I didn’t mean to make it sound like I’d be a stalker or something.” She pauses, and he’s pretty sure she’s genuinely embarrassed with herself even though he’s nothing but charmed.

“You just like to _accidentally_ meet minor celebrities?”

“Well, there aren’t that many I’d bother to meet.”

“And I’d make that cut?”

“You seem like a nice guy, and I think I’ll like your show.”

“What a shame I missed out on that.”

Daisy raises her eyebrow at him, and then looks down at his hands, specifically his left hand, and he figures she must know about that, too.

“Because you didn’t take the job.”

“No.”

“Because John Garrett wanted it?”

“Politics,” he answers vaguely, not a yes but not a no either. “There was a group of producers who liked him and not me, and it was just easier to keep my head down.”

“So what’s changed now?”

“Well, a lot of them are gone. And I had a...near death experience a few years ago.”

“That made you want to go for what you wanted?”

“Yeah.”

He spreads out the fingers of his left hand on the bar and looks down at him, notices the way she’s still looking from the corner of his eye.

“You read about this, too?”

“Yeah, I…” She frowns. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, it’s fine.” And it is. It’s bizarre, admittedly, because the fact is that outside of his friends at the studio, no one really knows this, what she’s apparently found out. “I’m an amputee.”

The hand wasn’t even the worst part of the accident, but it’s definitely been the part with the longest lasting effects.

After it happened, Fury had found a doctor in South Korea working on high level prosthetic technology, pulled some strings to get him into prototype testing. The latest model is almost indistinguishable (visually, at least) from a natural hand, the kind of thing that makes it easy to slide into the job now, but back when it first happened...

“Is that…”

“Yeah.” He touches the metal band around his left arm, the only sign left that the hand isn’t his own, something he can easily cover and that most people never notice.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Phil,” Daisy says suddenly, and he looks up at her, alarmed. “I shouldn’t have brought it up, I knew you —”

“No,” he shakes his head. “You didn’t bring it up, I did. And it’s fine. Honestly.”

It’s _actually_ fine — kind of nice, almost — to talk to someone who knows, to not wonder if he’s supposed to bring it up. It stopped bothering him a long time ago, but it’s like every time he meets someone new, every time he has to worry about it as a _reveal_ , it hurts again.

He presents his left hand to her, a silent offer to touch, and she does, dragging her finger in a slow pattern across his palm.

“You can’t feel that?”

“No,” he admits, feeling kind of sad that he can’t feel it, the figure eights she’s drawing, the way she’s tracing up the tip of his middle finger.

“It’s _incredible_.”

“It is,” he agrees. “I’m lucky Fury was able to help.”

She nods, and he watches as she presses her whole hand against his.

“I thought maybe I had found bad information at first. Especially when I watched today and…”

“The technology’s come a long way in the last few years, and this is really the most cutting edge stuff available.”

Daisy squeezes his fingers, the kind of touch he can almost feel, and then releases his hand in order to grab her glass and take a large sip.

“So, that got way too personal way too fast, right?”

“It’s okay.”

And he means it.

“It’s just, I don’t normally meet people that I’ve researched like this. It’s weird, you know? Like I know you, but…”

“Do I want to know why you were doing research about me?”

“It’s just what I do.” She pauses, grimacing like she’s just revealed something bad. “I mean, I don’t look up people I know usually. It’s not like I go out of my way to invade people’s privacy. But you’re a _celebrity_. I mean, how was I supposed to know I’d end up drinking with you?”

She sounds kind of amazed about the whole thing, even though it’s him that should be the amazed one. Even though it’s him that’s spent the past three years looking forward to every video she’s posted.

“It’s fine. It puts us on more equal footing.” Because that matters to him somehow, that he’s not the only one who’s invested in this, that he’s not the only one who feels a personal connection to someone he barely knows, that there’s an equality between them.

“Since you already know so much about me?”

She looks at him over the top of her glass, eyes dancing and curious.

“I was watching when you talked about searching for your parents. And when you found out what happened to them.”

Her eyes get big and sad and serious.

“You’ve heard all about the hardest parts of my life.”

“Fun ones, too. You talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and sex,” he half-reminds her, remembers the show after she broke up with her last ‘shitty asshole boyfriend,’ and made migas and micheladas and extolled the values of TexMex food to her Colombian friend as part of her celebration.

“Oh my god, you’ve watched me give pointers on oral sex.”

That had been part of the ‘shitty asshole boyfriend’ detox, Daisy’s anger at how _the sex wasn’t even that good_ and the turn it took as she and her friend drank too many micheladas.

“Those were good pointers,” he says, managing to keep a straight face.

She drops her face into her hands, and Coulson laughs, but reaches across and sets a soft hand on her arm, squeezes softly in a way he hopes feels comforting.

“That’s so embarrassing,” she mumbles into her palms, and he has the _most vivid_ recollection of her explaining the importance of fingers. “I only kept that because Elena said it was funny.”

“It was. And it’s not like you were...graphic.”

“It’s so unprofessional, though.”

“It’s always interesting. Watching you…” He slides his hand off her arm. It strikes him that it would be too pathetic to tell her that it’s a highlight of his week, every week, that she means that much to him. But then, it feels wrong to sit next to someone who means so much to him and to hold back. “I found your show while I was recovering. And watching you...the jokes and the stories and the politics and the food...it helped remind me why I ever wanted to do this in the first place.”

“Yeah?” She looks so _happy_ , like he’s just made her entire week or month or _life_ just by telling her the truth. “You don’t think I treat my show too much like a diary?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, “no, I like that about you. You make a real connection. That’s what I want to be better at.”

The subject change works, and she straightens up on her barstool, looks a little less mortified, and more interested in him.

“I thought you did fine.”

“Fine,” he says, like it’s an indictment, and Daisy laughs.

“It wasn’t great, I’ll admit. You were kinda stiff, especially compared to... _you_. The real you.” She eyes him for a moment like she knows him, like she understands him, this person he’s just met. “But it was your first show. You were nervous; give yourself a break.”

“Maybe one day I’ll be more like you.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but it comes out serious because it’s actually mostly serious, and she looks at him again, hard but soft at the same time, like she’s seeing him in a way that’s different than people usually do, like she’s seeing something in him that people usually miss. And he’s never considered himself to be someone prone to especially romantic bullshit thoughts, but he feels like she _sees_ him, and maybe like he _sees_ her, too.

And he’s just...unbelievably happy he decided to come to a community meetup.

Daisy’s long, knowing gaze turns shier, and she drops her eyes to her drink for a moment before speaking again.

“The spaghetti you made —”

“From my mother’s recipe.”

“You should have said that, Phil,” she says, almost laughing.

He runs a hand down his face.

“I was trying to be a little more like John Garrett,” he admits. Or at least he was going for a balance.

“But you’re nothing like him,” Daisy tells him like she’s never been more certain of anything in her life. “And that’s a _good_ thing.”

“So I should just be myself?” He grins, going for self-deprecating, but Daisy reaches over and presses on his shoulder, a little nudge that barely rocks him in his chair.

“It’s not bad advice. Not when you’re as nice as you are.”

He flushes at that and smiles too much.

“Thanks.” He wants to say something else — something about how wonderful she is — but there’s a loud noise from behind them that breaks the moment, and they both look back to the group that Daisy left. “You should probably get back to your friends.”

He’s about to ask for her number or something, about to do something incredibly stupid and turn this perfect moment into something awkward, and he should really _really_ leave.

“Not my friends,” she corrects him. “Fans. People who became friends from watching me.” As she says it, an incredibly handsome Black man and Latina woman walk through the door and wave at her, and he recognizes them both as infrequent guests on her show. “Except for them.”

Coulson finishes his drink and nods.

“I’ll leave you to your party.”

“ _Or_ you could come join the party.”

“I don’t think I’d fit in over there,” he admits, shakes his head as he glances back at the table of twenty and thirty somethings.

“Mack is super old, too, you know,” Daisy jokes, clearly trying to keep things light, and it works inasmuch as he imagines it doesn’t bother her too much, sitting around with someone so much older.

“Gee, thanks.” He raises a sarcastic eyebrow at her, but can’t keep from smiling — his face hurts with all the smiling.

She looks so hopeful, and he has a moment where he can’t imagine disappointing her, but something else tugs him to leave, like he wants to hold onto this — this perfect little moment he’s had with her.

“You have to go,” she tells him more than asks.

“Yeah.”

They both stand, and then look at each other awkwardly, and he’s really not sure how to leave this.

“Yeah, I, um —” Daisy cocks her head as she takes him in. “It was _really_ nice to meet you.”

She extends her hand and he grasps it, his flesh and blood hand wrapped around hers, and he wants to do something incredibly stupid and cheesy, like lean down and kiss the back of her hand, so instead, he clenches his jaw and lets it go.

“The pleasure was all mine.”

He manages to take a step backwards, then another, putting a little distance between them.

“Phil,” she calls out to him, and he stops, watches her expectantly. “Next week, leave off the suit. And put on an apron.”

It makes him blush as he thinks of the publicity photo she liked, the one with the apron that made her decide he’s _sexy_ , and his cheeks get hot from the liquor and embarrassment as a shiver works down his spine.

“An apron?”

“That’s what was missing.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m right!”

He grins at her one last time before slipping out the front door. Somehow, he manages to get around the corner before he stops and takes a breath, lets it sink in that he met _Daisy_ , and she’s exactly how she’s always seemed in her videos — funny and smart and gorgeous.

And she liked him.


	4. Chapter 4

The next night — because Daisy works _fast_ , which he already knew — he watches her make his spaghetti, reproduce the base of the sauce his mother taught him, as she talks about his show. 

 _“You know, I have it on good authority that this sauce was a Coulson family secret recipe,”_ she tells the camera just before she slides a spoonful of it past her lips and sighs happily. _“And I have to say, it does not disappoint.”_

She’s so much better than he is, so natural at this, he thinks, and he’s struck with the urge to get her involved on his show. Mostly, he wants her on his team, wants her viewpoint and her ideas and her skills helping to define what he does.

But he also wants to do something to help her get a real start, for her own career, if that’s what she wants. (It’s not something she talks about a lot, whether she wants to make a _real_ career out of this, so he’s not sure.)

That’s what Nick Fury did for him, after all — he decided to take a chance based on a gut feeling, based on the idea that they could help each other. And for the ten years that he worked with Fury, it was a good partnership, a good sharing of ideas.

And he doesn’t have exactly the same social capital, but he has _some_ at least. He has enough that he could get her involved here, in whatever capacity she wants. At the very least, he could make sure she gets paid for her opinions, for her ideas about what would improve _Grub_.

“ _I think the biggest misstep Mr. Coulson made was probably wearing a suit, though_ ,” she shakes her head over a pan filled with sauteing veggies. _“You guys saw that picture, you know — he’s way too hot for that. If you’re watching tonight, Phil, I_ promise _I’m right.”_

He blushes again, even though he knows that when Daisy says he looks good that she means relative to other men his age, not relative to younger men she might find actually _attractive_.

The video is short, a review of his episode and a zip through his marinara sauce, and he feels a little bad that he had ever thought her review could be negative or hurtful. That’s obviously not the kind of person she is, and he knows that. Instead, she’s _helpful_ , offering thoughts on what was good and what she might do differently.

It all just makes him look forward to doing his show next week, to trying to talk more openly, a little more like Daisy does it.

When May knocks on his door, he jumps and closes the laptop guiltily, like he was doing something sordid instead of something perfectly fine, watching a perfectly innocent YouTube video starring a gorgeous, intelligent young woman who thinks he’s _hot_.

May raises an eyebrow at him, like she believes he probably _was_ doing something sordid.

“What’s up?”

May holds up a legal pad covered with her chicken scratch.

“Notes?”

He nods, invites her inside, and grabs them beers.

“It wasn’t a bad show,” she tells him as she settles into the side of the couch where she usually sits.

“No?”

“No. You were a little stiff, but you’ll be fine.”

He smiles at that because he knows May isn’t sugarcoating anything, and maybe he can actually do this.

“I’m thinking about ditching the suit next week,” he tells her, “maybe trying out a more casual look with an apron.”

“An apron,” she repeats, like he’s just said something ridiculous.

 


	5. Chapter 5

“You were right about the apron,” May acknowledges as they leave the set of his second show, headed back for his dressing room.

“It felt more natural,” he acknowledges.

“Women are gonna eat it up.”

He laughs and smooths his hand down the front of the bib part of the garment he’s still wearing. It’s not the same one he was wearing in the publicity shot, but it’s similar — homier and maybe more feminine than a traditional chef’s apron, and blue instead of white.

“Women are all about men in aprons?”

“Well, _some_ women,” she corrects herself, making a face as she scans her eyes down his body, announcing loudly that she’s definitely not one of them. Not that May would be attracted to him ever, regardless of his clothing choices.

“Thanks.” He laughs and turns the corner to his dressing room, only to find Daisy standing there, looking gorgeous in tight jeans and a white button down shirt tucked in in front.

It stops him in his tracks, seeing her _here_ , but he’s so glad to see her again. It’s been almost impossible to stop himself from thinking about her, from trying to figure out how to get back in touch with her.

(He had composed so many private messages to her, offering to meet up for dinner or drinks. Offering to cook her something. And they all sounded unavoidably like invitations for dates, and he had deleted them all.)

“Hi,” she greets him a little awkwardly, but he’s too dumbstruck to answer back.

“Can I help you?” May asks her, looking more than a little weirded out by the woman standing at his dressing room.

“Daisy,” Coulson finally manages. “May, this is Daisy. She’s a, uh, friend.” May raises a skeptical eyebrow at him, and he tries to smile back. “Daisy, this is Melinda May. She’s one of the producers of the show and —”

“We actually met once before,” Daisy tells May, suddenly standing up straighter, looking more professional and less nervous. “The event for Asian American Women behind the camera.”

“The YouTube star,” May says, with real recognition. “How did you meet Coulson?”

Daisy looks at him, makes it clear she’s going to let him be the one to answer this question.

“I’m a fan of Daisy’s show,” Coulson admits, fiddling a little nervously with the edge of his apron. “We met last week when she hosted an event.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I came by, I just —”

“No, I’m glad.”

He swallows and holds her gaze for too long until May breaks the moment by stepping backwards, away from whatever scene is unfolding.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Coulson.”

“Night, May.”

She’s not yet out of earshot, is still close enough to shoot him an eyebrow when Daisy reaches forward and lightly touches the top of his apron.

“You took my advice.”

“Yeah.” He ducks his head a little, thinks about the women who are going to _eat it up_ , wonders if she’s one of them. He _really_ wants her to be one of them, but squashes that feeling down. “Were you in the audience today?”

“Yeah. You were really good.”

There’s an awkward silence between them, and he desperately wants to fill it, like if he lets it sit for too long, she might  get bored and leave. But worrying about filling the silence makes him too nervous to actually think of something to say.

“Come in,” he finally manages, opening the door to his dressing room and ushering her inside.

He doesn’t magically find anything to say, but Daisy at least seems entertained as she looks around the room, still sparsely decorated since he’s only just moved into it. At least he doesn’t worry for a moment that she’ll leave.

“I’m gonna wash this off,” he says as he points at his face, self-conscious about all the crap gunked onto his skin, and Daisy nods her understanding.

He’s quick at the sink, wiping his face down with a makeup wipe and then going in with soap, and when he stands back up to dry off, he catches her eye in the mirror over his head. She drops her gaze immediately, clearly embarrassed that he’d seen her watching him, and it makes him flush to think of her watching him do something so mundane yet intimate.

There’s an intimacy to it that’s new to him.

And he’s new to having a dressing room, so of course all of this is new, but it’s also new to have someone in his work space at all. He’s barely maintained friendships outside of the show, and Rosalind always hated coming here, in the short time they were together.

Except that he really _really_ shouldn’t be comparing Daisy with Rosalind.

She’s the one that breaks the awkwardly long silence between them, made worse by the way he’s just been staring at her through the mirror.

“I hope you don’t think it’s too weird that I came by.”

And the truth is that he was so happy to see her, he hasn’t even gotten to the part where he wonders why, hasn’t gotten to the part where he wonders if it’s weird.

“Do you need anything?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I just...I wanted to give you my number?” His eyebrows shoot up of their own accord, and Daisy ducks her head. “Since, you know, I enjoyed talking to you and I thought...maybe you did, too.”

“I did,” he agrees as he turns around, faces her in the space that suddenly seems much smaller.

“Then maybe we could do it again.”

And he’d swear she’s flirting with him, that she’s asking him out on a date, but he doesn’t want to assume, is the thing. It seems much more reasonable that she’s looking for a friend, or maybe for someone who can be like a mentor in the industry. Much more reasonable that it’s all very innocent.

“I’d like that,” he says, shooting for a little bit of detachment, a little bit of cool.

A little too aware of the way she’s watching, Coulson peels off his apron and flings it over a chair.

“You really do look great in an apron,” Daisy tells him, and it’s teasing but it’s also... _teasing_ , and he can’t help but smile, even though he bites it back and glances at the floor as he rolls up his sleeves to his elbows while she watches.

And he wants to show off, he wants to do something stupid because the thought of _Daisy Johnson_ watching him and approving of him is...a lot.

“The conference where you met May —” He changes the subject entirely, off of anything potentially flirty and back to something safe. “Are you trying to break into television?”

“That’s the dream, right?”

And it’s not like he hasn’t already thought about it, not like it comes out of nowhere, but he definitely blurts it out artlessly when he asks:

“Do you want a job here?”

“A...what?”

She glances around her, like maybe she’s worried this is Candid Camera.

“A job. Here.”

“You’re offering me a job. Just like that?”

Her skepticism — the frown of someone who has lived the kind of life where good things haven’t happened enough — is familiar and endearing.

“I know you’re good. Why wouldn’t I offer you a job?”

“What kind of job?”

“What do you want to do? Behind the camera? Or…”

“That’s not how this works,” Daisy informs him, looking around his dressing room again. “You don’t just...get whatever job you want because someone decides they like you.”

“That’s how _I_ got the job,” he points out, and Daisy laughs.

“But like...you’d be my boss?” She sounds skeptical about that.

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I’d like you to consult on my show. Tell me how to make it better.” He can’t be her boss if he wants her honest input, if he wants her to feel free to tell him what to do; that seems pretty obvious. “But if there’s something else you want to do, I could help you get there. Or May could.”

May has mentored younger women looking to break into the industry before, it’s something she’s always been passionate about, and he’s completely positive that she’d be on board.

“Let me think about it?”

Coulson nods, supposes that’s the smart way to do this, to be slower and more cautious and not just blurting out job offers.

“Of course.”

“But maybe, while I’m thinking it over, I could buy you a drink?”

She looks really hopeful about it, and of course he’s never going to let her pay for his drink — not when he knows ninety percent of her income is ad-based — but that’s not why he hesitates. If he was worried about coming on too strong already, the concern is doubled now that he’s put a job on the table.

“My friends, um, Mack and Elena?” He nods his recognition of the people he saw last week, the people he recognizes from her show. “I was planning to meet them anyways.”

Friendly, then. It relaxes him a little, makes it easier to pretend that spending time with her isn’t pretty much the best thing he can imagine.

“Yeah.” He nods and he tries to keep himself from smiling too widely. “Yeah, I’d like that.”


	6. Chapter 6

The bar is a little dive, close and clean and cheap — somewhere he can’t believe he’s never been. And Daisy’s friends are nice, especially Elena.

Mack is... _skeptical_ seems like too nice a word.

Everything is cordial at first, he and Daisy sitting across from Mack and Elena, until the women leave the table to get drinks (Coulson’s credit card tucked between Daisy’s fingers despite protestations).

“How long have you been in television?” Coulson would swear Mack asks the question like an accusation, like he’s pointing out the age gap between Coulson and Daisy, and he squirms a little in his chair.

“I’ve been behind the scenes at _Grub_ for twenty years,” he answers, trying not to be too bothered because, well, he’s definitely too old for Daisy, but also he’s not dating her anyways.

“I never really got the cooking stuff,” Mack tells him, shakes his head and smiles his ridiculously handsome smile, and Coulson thinks that maybe he was misinterpreting things, that what he thought might be skeptical or protective was more awkward, more being unsure of someone new. “My brother’s really good, though. When he was a kid, he used to watch the other host — Fury.”

“Fury’s been a mentor to a lot of young up-and-coming chefs.”

“Including you.”

“Including me,” Coulson agrees. “Does your brother live around here?”

“Nah.” Mack shakes his head. “He’s back home in Illinois.”

“Is he jealous that you know Daisy?”

Mack laughs and nods.

“I might even be able to convince him to visit, if he can meet you, too.”

It makes Coulson blush because he’s nobody, but he has a real job, now, one that means he’s maybe on his way to being _somebody_.

“I’m not used to the idea of people wanting to meet me,” he admits.

“You should probably get used to it,” Mack tells him sagely, and Coulson blushes. “You have other hobbies? Besides the food stuff?”

Coulson draws a blank because the _food stuff_ has taken over his life, but Mack is an engineer and made reference to his own custom bike, so he takes a stab at something they probably have in common.

“Cars. My dad and I started working on a ‘62 Corvette when I was a kid.”

Mack perks up instantly, and they dive into a conversation about Mack’s bike and Lola’s engine and the joy of working with one’s hands.

“So you’re still working on her?”

“Always,” Coulson answers honestly. “I’ve been customizing her engine —”

“Ugh,” Elena complains as she approaches the table, Daisy following close behind. “Men and their _engines_.”

“You like my engine,” Mack teases her, and Coulson squirms a little on his stool as Elena responds, leaning in close enough that her words are unintelligible, pressed against Mack’s lips. Mack makes like he’s going to pull away, like he’s not going to carry forward with a public display of affection, but then Elena presses herself up against him, and Coulson can see it when Mack’s resolve melts.

Coulson glances over at Daisy, watches as she sets a whiskey down in front of him and then settles on her own stool. It’s awkward, the two of them sitting across from a couple making out, and it strikes him that this isn’t safe _at all_ , that if anything this is more dangerous than being alone with her, that somehow he’s found himself on a double date.

“Elena was in Florida all week,” Daisy says, shooting him a smile that’s part apology and part commiseration, “so they’re sort of…”

“Yeah,” he nods his understanding.

“You, um, are building an engine?”

Daisy looks about as awkward as he feels, and he can’t help the glance at the couple across the narrow table, at the way that Mack and Elena seem to have lost themselves in each other.

“Yeah.” He turns away from the scene across from them, puts all his focus on Daisy. “It’s a car my dad bought before he died. We worked on her together.”

“Was your dad a mechanic?”

“History teacher,” he corrects her. “And football coach. Fixing cars was just a hobby.”

“Did you work on a lot of cars with him?”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, Lola was —”

“Lola?” She grins, like she maybe finds it charming instead of juvenile. “Did you name her, or was it your dad?”

“I named her.” He blushes anyways, even if she's not judging him.

“Because she was special?”

“Yeah. The only car we worked on together.”

“And you’re still working on her.” She says is it like it’s fascinating and wonderful, and he nods. “Something I didn’t know about you.”

Coulson laughs, head ducked down.

“I’m sure there are a few things you don’t know, yet.”

His ears burn a little at the _presumption_ of it, of the _yet_ , of the idea that she would even _want_ to learn more about him.

“Hmm,” Daisy props her chin on her hand and looks at him with playful eyes, though, like finding out more about him is all she wants to do. “Are you dating someone?”

“No,” he answers easily, but his face slips into a frown. “No, it’s been a long time since I got close to anyone.”

“That’s sad.” Her words come out as almost a whisper, quiet in a way that makes him slide a little closer.

“What about you? You haven’t mentioned anyone on your show in a while.”

“Not since Lincoln.”

“The shitty asshole,” Coulson supplies, and yes he definitely watched her very special breakup episode more than once, watched her only “Mature” rated episode, watched Daisy explain the best technique for going down on a woman with fingers and tongue and varying shapes and pressure.

She laughs, and the sound of it draws Mack and Elena away from each other. Mack looks contrite for the PDA, but Elena just looks pleased. It’s pretty cute, if he’s being honest.

“You’re talking about Campbell?” Mack says the name with no love lost.

“ _Hijueputa_ ,” Elena spits.

“He was having a rough time in his own life,” Daisy says magnanimously, and Coulson watches Mack frown.

“That doesn’t give him the right to take it out on you.”

“I know,” Daisy responds, more like she’s trying to placate her friends than like it means something to her.

And there’s a part of him that wants to fish for stories, wants to understand the context of what’s being said (and left unsaid), but a bigger part of him is too aware of Daisy’s incredible discomfort. So instead of asking, he draws attention back to himself.

“The last person I dated, Rosalind,” he frowns through her name, still frowns through it, will probably always frown through it, “turned out to be less interested in me and more interested in poaching me over to her network.”

“Rosalind _Price_?”

He nods once. She’s been the visible head of _Food Inc_ for a long time, so it’s not shocking that Daisy has heard of her.

“And then she took John Garrett.”

“She did,” Coulson nods. That announcement had come some months after the breakup.

“So she did you a favor,” Daisy suggests, and he smiles at that.

“By accident, I’m sure. She isn’t exactly the type to do favors for other people.”

As they’re talking, he’s vaguely aware of Mack and Elena shuffling away, back to a little dance floor by the electronic machine that passes for a jukebox these days.

“Lincoln… He wasn’t the type to help people, either. I guess...he wasn’t a very nice person. Not like he was specifically terrible, just…”

She looks deeply sad for a moment, and he can imagine that it took her a lot to get to where she could acknowledge this — admit it freely and easily.

“You deserve a nice person,” Coulson says because it’s true, because Daisy is a nice person and she deserves someone who will only ever treat her kindly.

It makes her smile, at least, his clumsy attempt at connection.

“He made me realize that I’ve picked some...not nice people. When we broke up, he said I try to pick people I can save. But I wasn’t trying to save him, I just…”

“You wanted to help?”

“Is that so bad?”

Coulson shrugs, eyes down on the table.

“The same has been said about me.”

“That you want to save people?”

“Hmm. That I want to be the white knight. Lancelot.”

“And do you?”

“I like to think that I just like to help people. It feels good to do something nice for someone.” He pauses, thinks back to some of the words that Rosalind said to him when they broke up, that he couldn’t get close, that he couldn’t love, that he could only try to be a useless white knight. It hurts, especially because he isn’t certain that she was wrong. “But maybe.”

“Is that why you offered me a job? To be a white knight?”

He looks up at her, a little shocked.

“No,” he can answer honestly, completely and totally honestly. “No, I offered you a job because you’re good. Because I like how you see the world and I want your ideas on my show.”

“And the fact that it’s my lifelong dream? To work on _Grub_?”

He hadn’t known that — _lifelong dream_ — and it makes him smile that he can help her with finding what she wants, that what he wants and what she wants fit together, like it’s meant to be.

“Bonus.”

She laughs, this loud clear beautiful laugh that makes his chest warm.

“That’s a good answer.”

His response is a little noise of acceptance, and he freezes a little when Daisy leans towards him. He’s shocked — and also hopeful in a way he can’t bear to acknowledge — when her nose brushes his cheek, but her lips end up against his ear and not his mouth.

“I think you’re a pretty nice person,” she whispers there, and he’s not sure whether it’s more her words or her breath that makes him shiver.


	7. Chapter 7

He has a good time.

Actually, that’s an understatement because he can’t remember the last time he had such a good time. He promises to give Mack a tour of Lola’s engine, and he practices his piss-poor Spanish with Elena, and he and  Daisy talk about food trucks and the farm bill and their exes and the weather in Wisconsin.

When Elena and Mack stumble out the door for their walk home, Daisy rises, too, and Coulson sort of wants to cry at the thought of leaving her. He has her number now, this isn’t the end of anything, but it still feels that way — like he’s giving something up.

“Come on,” she suggests, holding out her hand to him, “I’ll walk you home.”

He smiles and takes her hand, lets her lace their fingers together as they walk towards the door, but he can’t help but ask:

“Shouldn’t I be the one walking you home?”

“So you can be my white knight?”

He blushes, and Daisy takes pity on him, smiles sweetly and bumps her shoulder against his to make it light.

“Maybe I just want to see your kitchen in person. Be where the magic happens,” he suggests.

“Maybe I haven’t been shopping in a week, and I want you to make me a midnight snack.”

Some of the tension in his chest loosens, just knowing that he doesn’t have to leave her, yet, that they get to walk to his apartment and that he gets to cook her food. That they might still have hours together. He imagines her staying on his couch, imagines getting to see her in the morning, too.

And it’s possible he’s completely fucked, but he can’t even care because Daisy is smiling at him and holding his hand.

“I can do midnight snacks.”

They leave the bar still hand in hand, and he’s _just_ buzzed enough that he can ignore the implications of it, that he can pretend that it’s something friendly and not something obviously more. It’s good because thinking too hard about the implications of it would almost certainly make it stop.

So he leads them down the sidewalk and tries to stay calm about it.

It’s just the two of them walking. Just the two of them walking with their hands linked together, and the noise of the street fading into the background, and the pools of yellow light from the streetlamps catching stray sparkles in the concrete, and it’s definitely not the most romantic moment he can ever remember having.

They don’t speak for the length of the walk. He considers it a few times — asking a question, maybe, checking how far away she lives. But he feels so comfortable holding her hand, just being present with her, that he can’t bring himself to do anything to break the peace of the moment, of this walk.

So they’re quiet, and he doesn’t drop her hand until he approaches the pedestrian entry of his apartment complex, unlocks the little iron gate and ushers her onto the property towards his place.

As they walk through the gate, he’d really like to reach down and grab her hand again, but he’s sober enough now that it feels too forward, like asking for something he definitely shouldn’t ask for. Instead, he lets his right hand hover just over her back as they walk up the stairs and to his door.

Which is the first time he can think beyond _spending more time with her_ and get to Daisy being inside his apartment, Daisy touching his things. It sends a torrent of butterflies fluttering through his stomach — Daisy standing at his door, Daisy coming inside his home, Daisy coming inside his home _after midnight_ — and his hand shakes slightly as he pulls out his key and pushes it into the lock.

“I’m a really good houseguest,” she jokes, and Coulson feels bad that she can sense his nerves, that he might be making her feel unwelcome.

“I was just wondering whether I left things a mess,” he lies, and then pushes the door open and lets her step inside.

“Because you’re so clearly a messy guy.” She laughs and takes two steps into the apartment, spotless as ever.

“It’s not everyday I bring a YouTube star here,” he jokes as he swings the door shut behind him, tries to ignore the way that it’s really not everyday he brings anyone here, especially a gorgeous woman who just held his hand for almost a mile of walking.

There’s a beat of awkward silence, and then Daisy breaks it.

“So, give me a tour?”

He nods and flips on a floor lamp near his couch, illuminating the room and his curio case of collected cooking utensils — gilded chopsticks and overly ornate spoons and preserved gourds and all the precious things he’s acquired on his travels.

She smiles as she looks it over, touches her finger onto the glass.

“You’ve been to China.”

“Yes. I know some chefs in Beijing and Shanghai.”

“One day, I’m going to visit Changsha,” she tells him with this certainty, the kind of tone that makes it clear that it’s something she’s obviously told herself a lot.

“Is that where your mother lived?”

“I think so.”

He remembers her talking to the camera, tears pooled in her eyes as she bravely talked about what she had found, about her father’s work with Doctors Without Borders and her mother’s corresponding humanitarian work, about their violent deaths, and about the mysteries that remain.

And he wants to do his stupid white knight thing, tell her that he’ll take her. He’ll take her tomorrow, or just send her if she wants to go alone, because it isn’t fair that her roots are still such a mystery to her.

Instead, though, he steps back and lets her look, lets her deal with whatever’s in her head until she turns back to him, easy smile on her lips.

“You need to tell me stories about everywhere you’ve been.” It’s almost accusatory, like he’s been holding out on her, like he’s had enough time with her to have held out on her, like they’ve known each other much more and much longer than they actually have.

But the fact is that he feels it, too, this connection to her. And it’s not even the giddiness of before — of having met someone he’s imagined meeting, of having her surpass his dreams of her. No, it’s much more real, much more grounded. Daisy is this woman in front of him, not the personality he’s watched online. Daisy likes whiskey and her hands are surprisingly strong and she laughs like bells are ringing.

“I told you about Colombia,” he says instead of any of the more profound thoughts in his head. He _had_ talked about Colombia, it’s how he ended up trying to speak with Elena in her native tongue.

“Hm,” she makes a vague noise as she slips past him towards the tiny hallway that leads to his single bedroom. He trails behind her, down to stand beside her where she’s paused with her hand on the doorknob.

He swallows as she turns it, wonders if he’s supposed to say something, and then the door swings open to reveal his queen bed, made neatly with his navy blue duvet. The room is utilitarian, pretty sparsely furnished, and probably announces that he rarely has company in here.

Daisy says nothing, just turns around and slips by him again, her whole body pressed to his for a split second in the narrow little hallway, long enough that he can feel his heartbeat in his ears.

“Now the kitchen,” she suggests, sounding genuinely excited about it, so he follows her down the hallway to the kitchen space — definitely the best, biggest room in the small apartment, definitely why he lives here.

“Oh, this is _nice_ ,” she sighs, dragging her fingers across the granite-topped island and the gas cooktop and the double ovens.

“When do I get to see _your_ kitchen?”

“Maybe next time,” she allows. “But you’re going to have to make a video with me.”

It makes his pulse race, the thought of making a video with Daisy — of that famous personality colliding with this woman he’s getting to know.

His excitement must show because she laughs at him.

“You have _your own show_ , Phil. Like, a real actual show.”

“But yours is…”

Daisy looks genuinely flattered he thinks, though she must have caught onto this by now, that he loves her show, that he thinks she’s something special.

“So what’s your late-night snack specialty?” She changes the subject gracefully as her eyes dart to the fridge.

He runs through a mental list of what he has available, of what he imagines she would like, of the best thing he could make for her —

“Hey,” he’s called out of his head when she tugs his hand, and he looks down to watch as she wraps her fingers back around his, her hand cool and small and perfect. “You don’t have to try to impress me.”

He blushes at the accusation and because of course he wants to impress her.

“Just trying to remember what I have on hand.”

“Hmm,” she nods her understanding. “But what’s your ultimate comfort food?”

“Grilled cheese,” he answers easily enough.

“Do you do it fancy, or are you a classic kind of guy?”

“I guess it depends on my mood. How about you?”

She shrugs.

“Tonight, I could go fancy? What kind of cheese do you have?”

“Lots,” he answers.

“Brie?”

“Yeah.” He can see her brain working, see her glancing around the kitchen, thinking about what they could make, and he wants to cook with her, wants her to cook in his kitchen. “You want to make a fancy, I’ll make a basic?”

“Why, Chef Coulson, are you proposing a challenge?”

“Iron Chef grilled cheese,” he jokes, but Daisy raises an entirely serious, entirely competitive eyebrow at him.

“You’re on.”

A beat passes as they examine each other, and then in unison they dash for the double-door fridge and throw it open, both laughing entirely too much.

Since Coulson has the home-field advantage, he hangs back, watches as Daisy rummages through his food before emerging with a few kinds of cheese and bacon and two brown pears.

“Bread’s in that cabinet,” he points across the room and watches her dart over to it, sorting through the different options.

“Forget my kitchen,” Daisy sighs as she chooses her loaf, “I’m going to come film in _your_ kitchen.”

“You can, if you want,” he offers, tries not to sound too excited about it.

“You’ll regret that when I use all your food, though.” He looks over to watch her open the butter bell on the counter and sniff the contents. “You keep _truffle butter_ on your counter.”

He smiles, a little embarrassed at being called on his extravagance, but Daisy doesn’t seem interested in pushing it, just pulls out a piece of bread and spreads it with the butter.

“Oh my god, Phil,” she sighs against a bite. “You’re never going to get rid of me, now. I hope you’re okay with that.”

And he just...he really, _really_ is.

After the initial teasing, they prep quietly, Coulson breaking occasionally to help Daisy find a knife and a cutting board and his panini press, but otherwise leaving her to her own thing.

It’s only when he’s ready to drop his sandwiches onto a cast iron pan that he looks over to see her searching through his cabinets, coming up triumphantly with a stainless steel pan.

He abandons his sandwiches, prepared but uncooked, and heads to her side.

“Can I help?”

“You’re gonna be my sous chef?”

“I’m really good at it,” he half-boasts.

“Really good at taking orders?” She nudges her shoulder against his and shoots him a flirty smile. It makes him breathless, jaw dropped and lungs empty, and he wonders what part of his brain was ever convinced that coming out with her tonight was something innocent.

“Yeah,” he breathes his answer, entirely too serious about it, but whatever Daisy sees when she looks at him makes her smile.

“That’s _good_ ,” she says. His heart beats in his throat as their eyes lock, and then she hands him the package of bacon, breaking the moment between them. “Four strips.”

He smiles and sets to work, cooking bacon as she cuts her pears, and then he just stands back and watches her add her fruit to the bacon fat with brown sugar and salt.

“I’ve never seen you make a grilled cheese before.”

“No, I don’t make a lot of sandwiches,” she acknowledges, and as he watches she pops a little pinch of grated cheese into her mouth, “but right now I can’t figure out why.”

“You should make this for your next show.”

Daisy laughs and shakes her pears, which are caramelizing beautifully in the pan.

“We’ll see how it comes out first.”

“This is new?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs and pokes around through his spice cabinet, emerges with black pepper that she grinds on top of the pears once they’re off the heat.

“If this were your show, you’d be sharing something about a time you ate pears,” Coulson half-prompts her, wants to hear her talk more about herself, but realizes after he’s said it that he’s basically asking her for a performance. “Sorry, you don’t have to…”

Daisy smiles, though, like this isn’t any imposition.

“This family I stayed with when I was in the third grade.”

“A good one?”

She’s talked about this on her show, about the good ones and the less-good ones, about being bounced around too often, and he wants to touch her — to set his hand on her shoulder maybe, to do something comforting. Instead, he clenches his fists by his sides.

“Yeah,” she agrees, eyes down on her pan, “a good one. They had a pear tree in the backyard, and I’d play outside and eat them.”

She sounds so sad, even though it’s a happy memory.

“How long did you get to stay with them?”

“Not quite a year.”

She smiles up at him, and his heart breaks for the idea of a little girl taken away from a family and a home, so he uncurls his fingers and reaches forward to touch her — hand on her upper arm, just a light touch, something he hopes feels like comfort.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

“It’s fine,” she tells him, leans slightly into the weight of his hand on her arm for a moment, and then pulls away like she really _is_ fine.

Or maybe like she’s someone who has always _had to be_ fine.

Coulson drops his hand and stalls out in his search for something to say, just watches her make her sandwiches, layering pears with cheeses.

“What do _you_ remember when you think of pears?”

And he hesitates for a moment, wonders if he should press on her instead, offer her some kind of comfort. But she smiles at him, head tilted inquisitively, and no, he decides: what he can offer her is this, is trusting her with stories about himself.

“Two memories. One is of going on picnics with my mother. Her favorite was pear and gruyere, and she would bring slices of cheese and pear, and we’d eat them at the park.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. My mother was...you would have liked her.” It’s true, too. His mother was warm and generous and passionate and everything that draws him towards Daisy like a moth to a flame.

Daisy finishes assembling her sandwiches and smiles at him, so _much_ in her eyes, like maybe she’s searching for a way to comfort him, or for something big to say. Instead, she seems to shake it off.

“What’s the other?”

Thinking about that one, his cheeks get hot, all the way to his ears.

“That one is...a different kind of picnic.”

She raises her eyebrows at his blush.

“You don’t kiss and tell, hmm?”

“Bradley,” he shares, since actually she does this all the time, has been far more vulnerable than this while he watched her emotions like a voyeur, and it doesn’t feel like a scary disclosure. Not with her.

“Bradley?” Her voice is soft and interested.

His eyes drift closed as he remembers holding hands under a maple tree with its leaves just turning orange, feeling unashamedly like himself. “My first real boyfriend. It was just after my mom died, when I was new in Manhattan, and I made him picnics like the ones she and I used to have. We would go to Central Park and sit under a tree, take a bite of pear and then kiss each other.”

“Sensual,” he hears her whisper, and when he opens his eyes he’s surprised to find her standing right in front of him. As she holds his gaze, she pops a piece of raw pear in her mouth, and Coulson’s jaw drops a little.

“Daisy?”

She looks slightly less sure of herself for a moment, swallows her bite of fruit.

“If I kiss you right now, would that be…” She clears her throat, like she’s not sure what word she’s looking for.

And the truth is that Coulson can’t understand _why_ she’d want to kiss him, but he’s not about to say that out loud, not when being kissed by Daisy sounds pretty much like heaven.

“That would be good,” he manages, entirely too breathless to get out anything more eloquent.

Her fingers wrap around the back of his neck, digging into his skin just enough that he can feel it, feel _her_. Just enough that it kills any lingering doubts that this might somehow be a dream.

He’s already moaning into it when he feels her breath on his chin, sweet from the pear she ate; by the time her lips actually cover his, he has to restrain himself from getting too frantic. He does, though — keeps a white-knuckled grip on the counter behind him as he kisses back slowly and deeply. He opens for her and brushes his tongue along hers, shakes with the pleasure of it.

Daisy is the one that escalates things by sliding her hands down his chest, tingling twin trails down to his waist that leave him whimpering into her mouth.

“Is this okay?” She asks the question between kisses as she hooks her fingers into his belt and tugs on the bottom of his shirt, untucking it slightly.

Coulson nods vigorously in response, finally manages to let go of the counter and grip the back of her head, to kiss her more deeply while her fingers pop open the buttons moving up his shirt. Her fingers on his chest make him remember his scars, though, and he feels like he should warn her.

“Daisy,” he breathes her name, pulls back enough to stop her. “The accident, I…”

She holds his gaze as she parts his shirt and pushes it down his shoulders, reveals his bare chest and the giant scar across his heart. He grimaces as he waits for her reaction, but she just leans forward and kisses his chest, light presses of her lips over and around the scar.

“You should relax a little,” she whispers against his skin, then drags her lips up towards his neck, kisses him there before pressing her mouth back to his.

“Yeah,” he agrees, draws in a short breath against her mouth, and then combs his fingers back through her hair so he can kiss her harder. “Yeah, I should relax.”

She laughs, breathy and sweet, and runs her fingers down his bare skin, back to his belt. He grunts when her hands brush over his cock, sending pulsing pleasure radiating through his body.

Her hands shake as she fiddles with his belt, tugs open the leather, and he breathes in sharp gasps of air against her fingers on his fly, the way he can feel his heartbeat in his whole body, the way it feels like every inch of him is screaming for her.

“This is probably too fast,” she mumbles against his lips, and he manages a hum in response.

And she’s probably right, it’s too fast, but he doesn’t want to stop. He wants the too fast, now that he knows it’s on the table, now that he’s not scared of wanting things he shouldn’t, now that he’s sure it’s allowed…

He wants it _a lot_.

He pulls back from her lips and meets her eyes right as she works her hand into his boxers, right as her fingers curl around him.

“I _really_ like you,” he manages, the best he can do to express that this is _something_.

She tightens her grip around him, slides her palm up and down his cock to bring him to fully hard in her hand, and he groans as the pleasure licks up at the base of his spine.

“I _really_ like you, too,” she tells him, her eyes very serious, and he leans in to kiss her again, harder and deeper with his fingers in her hair.

Daisy jacks him off slowly, her hand curving around his cock again and again, and Coulson gets more and more confident with his own hands — wandering from her head to her shoulders, down her arms, brushing over her breasts.

He grunts when she pushes him back against the counter and tugs his boxers and jeans down his legs.

“Daisy,” he sighs her name, tries to pull her back up against him, but she presses him harder against the counter and drops down to kneel on the floor.

And the world sort of spins around him for a moment, like he can’t possibly reconcile that this is his life, being half naked in his kitchen with _Daisy Johnson_ , that Daisy Johnson is about to go down on him.

Coulson grips the counter behind him again as her lips close around his cock, and he hisses at the heat, at the way her tongue draws a careful circle against the head.

She looks up at him as she sucks harder, and it feels like he could melt into the floor.

It doesn’t take long before he loses his tenuous control over himself, before he releases his grip on the counter in order to run his fingers through her hair. The world shrinks to the places where his body and hers are connected, to his cock in her mouth and his hands in her hair and her fingernails tracing up and down his thighs.

“Daisy,” he hisses her name as his orgasm approaches, and he can’t honestly remember if he knows any other words.

Like she understands his struggle, the need for a last push (the importance of _fingers_ , god but she does understand), she wraps her hand back around his cock, strokes him as her mouth makes shallow bobs over the head. He’s gone almost instantly, pulsing with the waves of his orgasm, his whole body shaking with the intensity of it.

After, she rests her cheek against his thigh for a moment, and he runs a hand through her hair as he struggles for breath. When she stands up, she moves in to kiss him, but then frowns with her lips an inch from his, like maybe she thinks it would be unwelcome.

Coulson is the one that closes the gap, that tugs her mouth down against his, and he kisses her deeply, chasing out the taste of himself on her tongue.

“You want to eat grilled cheese now?” She asks the question against his lips after an endless moment of kissing, and Coulson laughs.

“No,” he answers honestly because despite his own satiation, he _wants_. He wants to make her feel good, to give her even half of what she’s just given him.

“You want to eat something else?” She pulls a face as she says it, an overly self-conscious attempt at _sexy_ , and then looks mortified at the line.

Coulson can’t contain his laughter, though he tries to bury it in the side of her neck.

“Smooth,” he teases her, and Daisy snorts, but tilts her head like she’s offering up her neck for his mouth, so he lays soft kisses there.

“I’m really bad at being sexy.” She says it like a confession of a failing, and it’s funny because no one has ever been more sexy.

“You’re doing pretty well so far.” He murmurs the words between kisses up to her ear, and she lets out a shuddering breath, which turns into a moan at the feel of his hands sliding down her body, gripping her hips for a moment over her jeans.

“It’s just… I don’t normally do things like this,” she tells him, just as he closes his teeth gently around her earlobe and she presses her clothed body up against his mostly-naked one.

“Things like what?”

“Um, go into someone’s house and go down on them on a first date?”

She looks horrifically embarrassed again, and Coulson slides a soft hand down her arm, fixates on obviously the wrong part of her statement.

“This… Was this a date, tonight?”

“I asked you out for drinks,” she points out. “Didn’t you…”

“I didn’t dare to hope.”

Daisy laughs, and maybe he should be embarrassed for himself, but it’s not _cruel_ laughter is the thing. It’s joyful laughter, like she’s so completely delighted to be standing in his naked arms, and then she slides her palms across his cheeks and tugs his mouth back against hers.

Her forwardness makes it easier for him to press forward, to run his hands up her sides and cup her breasts over her white top, and then to raise his fingers to the open collar and flick open the top button.

“I don’t normally do this, either,” he tells her quietly, once he pulls away from her mouth in order to watch as her body comes into view, the inside curves of her breasts and the tan lace of her bra and the smooth line of skin down to her belt.

“Undress strange women in your kitchen?”

He shakes his head and pushes her shirt apart, and it’s almost terrifying as he looks down at his right hand — the hand of a fifty year old man — sliding along her perfect skin. Because the fact is that Coulson doesn’t consider himself to be someone attracted to much younger women. The last time he dated someone Daisy’s age, he was much closer to Daisy’s age, and the gap between them seems suddenly much too real.

Whether it’s wondering what it says about him, or wondering what she sees when she looks at his chest —

Daisy pulls him out of his thoughts with her fingernails running through his hair, and he looks up to see her eyes.

“Maybe, since we’re both so bad at this usually, doing things different than normal is good?”

He smiles at that.

“Yeah,” he agrees, thinks about how much he needs _different_ , and how much he _likes_ her, her company and her conversation and the way she sees the world.

Coulson goes to take a step towards her, to close the gap between them and kiss her again, and almost trips over his jeans, where they’re bunched around his knees. Daisy laughs into a kiss, and then pulls back, giving him room to tug his boxers and jeans up to his waist.

Once he’s not in danger of falling on his face, Coulson runs his hands back up her stomach to cup her breasts over her bra.

She’s noticeably less confident in this, being the more passive player, and he can practically feel her nerves under his fingertips.

“Daisy, do you…” Before he can get out a question as to whether she’s sure, whether she wants this, she runs her fingers through his hair, looks completely sure even if she’s nervous. “Do you have orders for me?”

There’s a moment of shock on her face, and then she smiles, an almost filthy smile before she pulls him down into a kiss.

“You’re a sous chef at heart, aren’t you?” She mumbles the words against his lips, and he laughs but nods.

When she pulls back, Daisy looks more confident, and as he watches, she strips her open shirt off her shoulders and then tugs off her bra. His jaw drops and his breath catches, leaving him staring in silent awe, only vaguely aware of her almost triumphant smirk, as though his reaction is exactly what she was going for.

It’s Daisy that breaks the moment by grasping his hand and tugging him away from the counter and towards the kitchen table. She sits backwards onto the surface — shoots him a questioning look, _is this okay_ , to which he nods — and then pulls him forward, moving his mouth to her chest.

Coulson kisses her breasts happily, lips moving first across the top of her cleavage when her arms are pressed together and the flat plane between her breasts when they aren’t, and then the baby soft skin up the inner curves. She’s the one who directs his lips to her right nipple, and her fingers tug at his hair as she writhes against him.

With his mouth moving over her skin, he presses his hands to her sides, and then runs his palms down to her belt, lets his fingers dip just underneath the waistband of her jeans.

Daisy is the one that reaches down to unzip her jeans, and he pulls back to meet her eyes as he helps her push them and her panties down her thighs. Once they’re down to her knees, she presses his fingers between her legs, and he groans at the almost silky feel of her arousal coating his digits.

Coulson presses his index finger against her opening, and as he pushes inside, her eyes widen, and then she leans forward to bury her face against the side of his neck, her fingers digging into his skin just below his hairline.

“That’s _good_ ,” she whispers, a quiet breath underneath his ear.

He moans his approval, aroused even though he can’t possibly be aroused again so quickly, and curls his finger inside of her.

They move together, Daisy’s hips in overdrive against his hand, but it’s not long before the breathy the noises she makes turn frustrated. And he wants to lay her back on the table, to tug off her jeans and put his mouth on her, but she’s clearly a little skittish when she’s not the one in control.

“Tell me what you need?”

She inhales deeply against his neck, and then kisses him there and slides her lips up to his ear. At the feel of her breath whispering over his lobe, Coulson swallows and adjusts his hand, presses a second finger inside of her.

“Will you —” Her breath hitches and she shudders before she can make a request.

“Yes,” Coulson answers, probably too adamant.

Daisy laughs and presses her lips back against his ear.

“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

There’s a pause, and he can feel the way she almost curls in on herself.

“I might not...you know. Not because of you, just —”

“Do you want to stop?”

He’s suddenly worried that he’s pushing too hard because no matter how connected to her he feels, the fact is that she’s still practically a stranger and he _is_ pushing. He pulls his hand backwards, sliding his fingers away from her, but Daisy grabs his wrist and holds it in place.

“No. I don’t want to stop,” she says, her eyes big and serious, and she presses Coulson’s thumb to her clit, so that he watches as a shiver runs down her spine and she breathes out a moan.

“That’s good,” he manages, barely a whisper, before she grabs his cheeks and pulls his mouth to hers, kisses him fiercely as his thumb circles her clit.

He’s breathless from the intensity of her kiss when she releases him in order to shove her jeans down her thighs. Coulson pulls back enough to help, to drag her clothes and her shoes off her body, and he can’t even make himself wait for instruction before he’s kissing her calves, bare and smooth and perfect under his lips. Daisy responds enthusiastically, stretches herself backwards on the table.

Her legs tremble under his lips as he slides his mouth up to her inner thigh, like she’s almost too on edge, about to snap them close around his head. He doesn’t want to push too hard, so he runs his fingers up her legs behind his mouth, consciously trying to be gentle as he pushes her thighs apart.

For all her concerns and nerves, she actually relaxes once he presses his tongue against her, once she runs her hands through his hair and encourages him to press harder. She lets out a tiny, high-pitched moan when he adds his fingers, and the sound of it could make him lose his mind.

He goes slow with it, though — enjoys the feel of her under him and the taste of her and the small sounds of pleasure she makes.

Her orgasm, when it comes, surprises him — it’s just silence, not even the sound of breathing, and tense thighs and subtle pulsing against his tongue. It’s almost anticlimactic, and he wants to keep going, especially since his cock is half hard again behind his zipper, but Daisy pulls him back.

It’s immediately obvious that for her it wasn’t remotely anticlimactic. She sucks in harsh breaths, her head lolls — wide-eyed — back on the table, and she flexes her legs as though she’s forgotten how to move them. And, yeah, it makes him smile, perhaps a little smugly, something he hides by pressing his mouth to her inner thigh.

“Oh,” she sighs once she’s had a minute to catch her breath.

“Hmm?”

“I like you _a lot_.”

Coulson grins and pushes himself up from his half-squat to lean over her and kiss her, is still smiling when she meets his kiss with her fingers tracing through his hair.

“Wanna eat that grilled cheese, now?” He manages to ask the questions between kisses, and Daisy moans.

“Yesss.”

He’s not prepared for how quickly she pops up from the table, though, and darts across the kitchen completely naked. Before he can issue any kind of admonishment against the dangers of naked cooking, she grabs his button down shirt from where it was left on the countertop and slips it on.

“You have an apron you could wear, Phil?”

The leering way she looks at him makes him blush, his face hot in his gleeful embarrassment, but he dutifully pushes himself up from the table and pulls an apron from the pantry.

“Good?” He asks once he’s tied it on to cover his naked chest.

“Better without the pants,” Daisy answers, and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to be around her without blushing like a boy.

Still, that’s how he ends up cooking completely naked in his kitchen at two in the morning, him flipping grilled cheese while Daisy sets her sandwiches carefully in the panini press, being careful to make perfectly crosshatched lines with the grill plates.

Eating is less about any sense of competition and more about enjoying each other’s efforts. Daisy’s sandwich is a perfect melding of sweet and salty and savory, and he moans his enjoyment into every bite.

She’s more surprised by his.

“What’s in here?” She shoves another bite of his grilled cheese in her mouth, narrows her eyes at him almost accusingly. “You saw my whole process, but I missed yours.”

Coulson shrugs his shoulders playfully.

“Coulson family secret.”

“I thought this was _basic_ grilled cheese.”

“It is...basic grilled cheese with my secret ingredient.”

“So you won’t tell me?”

She drops the remains of her sandwich and crawls from her chair into his lap, all naked and barely covered by his shirt.

“I could probably be persuaded,” he teases.

She kisses him _persuasively_ , and then pulls back, head cocked to the side.

“Grilled cheese could make a pretty fun show, actually. You could talk about the secret to making a good basic one, and show how to make good comfort food for cheap.”

“And you could show how to jazz it up on a budget,” he says, kind of liking the idea, that sweet spot Fury always used to try to hit of elevated food and ‘real people’ food.

“You could come on my show?”

“Or you could come on mine,” he counters, and Daisy looks almost shocked before she covers it behind a smile.

“Benefit of sleeping with the boss?” She throws it out like a joke, but Coulson shakes his head and tries to be as serious as he can while sprawled across a chair in his kitchen naked except for his apron.

“No. _This_ ...” he squeezes her hips, hands on her naked skin under his shirt, “ _this_ isn’t about that. Even if we weren’t…”

He clears his throat, suddenly not comfortable making a statement about what they _are_.

“You’d still invite me on your show?”

“I’m...a really big fan.” She laughs and kisses him, hands cupping his cheeks, and his heart stutters in his chest. “Even if you want to...stop…”

She pauses, hands still on either side of his face, her mouth hovering over his.

“Do you think you’ll want to stop?”

He blinks at that, at the ridiculousness of the question, at the fact that he’s spent too many moments of the past week telling himself there’s nothing here, nothing _with her_ , and now she’s mostly naked in his lap.

“No,” he answers, way too honest.

It seems like the right answer, though, based on the way her face lights up, and she leans in to press her forehead to his neck before she settles in on his lap and tucks back into her sandwich.


	8. Chapter 8

**ONE YEAR LATER**

“If you want to do appearances on Daisy’s show, we’re going to need to look at your contract," May tells him as she breaks apart a roll and spreads it with butter.

“My contract says I can’t make guest appearances on other shows?”

“Your contract says that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting owns _Grub_ , and therefore your ass, Coulson. The YouTube stuff was cutting it close enough, but when you’re representing the show on actual broadcast television —”

“I know.” He does, he knows.

May looks like she’s trying valiantly to smile, to roll with his weirdly petulant mood as they wait for their dates, seated at one of Daisy's favorite restaurants.

“She’s only moving to a different set,” May offers, a genuine attempt at comfort that Coulson appreciates a lot. It's true, she's only moving sets, not even networks. PBS will own her ass, too.

“I know. And I want this for her.” Actually, what he’d really wanted had been to hand over _Grub_ to her, had offered to step down in fact. She’s done enough guest spots that it feels like it would be a natural shift, but she’s about to move into her own brand, or rather, she’s about to take her existing brand to a bigger show.

And it’s better for her. He knows it is because he’d actually had to push her a little towards it, just a very little push, just refuting the idea that she hadn’t earned it, that she needed some kind of schooling to really do it right. But the setup of the show is perfect for her: everyday food activism and recipes from someone who _isn’t_ a classically trained chef. It’s perfect for Daisy, who does things her own way, and who probably never even wanted the pressure of taking over a decades-long institution of a show.

May stares at him across the table, and he sighs.

“I guess,” he allows, “even though it’s for the best, I’m a little sad. I’ve really liked how things have been.”

They've been really good. It's hard to believe that his life could be so demonstrably improved in the span of a year, but it is. In no small part from Daisy's help and advice.

“I’m sure she’ll still tell you what to do.” May deadpans the teasing line, and she _knows_ is the thing, knows exactly how much he likes it when Daisy tells him what to do, and it makes him flush crimson. He’s so focused on the way his face is burning that he doesn’t notice Daisy walking up behind him until her hands land on his shoulders and May actually laughs.

“I’ll _definitely_ still tell you what to do,” Daisy agrees from above his head, and Coulson closes his eyes in his shame, but lets his head drift back and rest against her stomach, enjoying the feel of her behind him — solid and calm and just...Daisy.

“Hi,” he whispers up at her, opening his eyes just enough to see her smiling down at him.

Across the table, he can hear May and Piper kiss each other hello.

“Hi,” Daisy greets him, presses her cool hands against his overheated cheeks.

“How’d it go?”

She nods, unable to hold back a gorgeous little smile.

“I’ll tell you about it when everyone’s here. Were you feeling sorry for yourself about how much you’re gonna miss me when you’re at work?”

It makes him flush all over again.

“Of course not. I’m happy —”

“I’ll miss you, too, Phil,” she tells him softly, drops a kiss against his forehead, and then steps back to settle into the chair next to his. It’s been good for both of them, he knows — working together and getting closer and he’s sort of forgotten how he ever did any of this without her in his life.

“You’ll be one studio over,” May grumbles, and Piper laughs next to her — they’re both going to have a hand in each show, so they definitely know how easy it will be.

They’re still getting gently mocked for their clinginess when Mack and Elena show up to join the celebration for Daisy’s first official taped show. Once they’re seated around the table, she launches into her discussion of filming her show. It’s not live, like his is, which lets her do a lot more traveling and investigation. And she’s had big plans to set the tone for her first episode — visiting fields and talking to farmworkers and giving tips on making connections with local sustainable farmers — and he can’t wait to see how it all came out. 

Once she wraps up talking about her day, they toast her and her success, and Daisy thanks them all for their support, shares an appreciative nod with May, and then sets wide, thankful eyes on him.

“You earned this,” he reminds her quietly because she did, because her work speaks for itself, because he doesn’t want her to thank him for her own success.

She nods once, like she almost believes it, and then May cuts off their quiet gaze.

“So, are we going to start planning your first collaboration?”

“I thought you said that was difficult.”

“No, I said we need to get your contract changed,” she corrects him. “That’s easy enough, and your viewers _like_ Daisy.”

Coulson smiles. Their rapport on the air has been huge with viewers, but it’s also something he loves, and he’s glad to know it won’t be going anywhere.

“Now we get to do collaborative shows twice as often,” Daisy reminds him. “We never did do the show about grilled cheese.”

“You’ll do fancy, I’ll do basic?”

She leans in and kisses him, probably too hard for a crowded table in a nice restaurant, but he just kisses back, run his tongue along her lower lip, and feels immensely grateful that they found each other.


End file.
